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British Imperialism in India & China -

19th Century

England

The period between 1815 and 1914, is known by many as "Pax Britannica" because of Great Britain's global domination of land and sea.

The kingdom controlled approximately 10,000,000 sq/mls and over 400,000,000 people. The phrase "The sun never sets on English soil." was coined during this century of overwhelming imperialism.

England was "the world's workshop" and English merchants constantly demanded greater access to raw materials and markets for trade.

This trend inspired over a century of British imperialism in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australia.

India

India was considered the "Jewel in the Crown" of Britain's vast imperial empire because of its vast wealth in raw materials and its population of over 300 million people.

The British established trading outposts in India at Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta while the Moghals still ruled in the 1600s.

Bombay

..."Mumbai" today

Madras

..."Chennai" today

Ceylon

..."Sri Lanka" today

Calcutta

..."Kolkata" today

British East India Company

The British East India Company was given a monopoly on trade between India and Great Britain.

The company, itself, ruled India as a conquering power from 1757 to 1857.

In 1757, the company, itself, defeated the last of the Mughal maharajahs and ruled over India with its own governors and military. The leaders were all British but the soldiers in the British East India Co. army were Indian - called "Sepoys".

The British East India Co. was a private joint-stock company founded by investors in the year 1600AD.

The company traded in:

salt

The British used opium as currency in its trade deals in China for tea and silks.

This practice had grave consequences for both the British and the people of China.

Hindu tradition in India dictated strict social and cultural rules for the Indian people which the British observed and used to their advantage.

British officials openly communicated racist attitudes against the Indian people and worked to keep traditional beliefs about the caste system in place to protect their power and authority.

Inspired by growing feelings of nationalism and resentment over British domination, the Sepoy soldiers rebelled in 1857.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yXKbd5IDzU

Terrified that the British East India Company could no longer secure India, the British government took control of the Indian sub-continent and began its direct rule, which lasted until India won its independence in 1947.

A more complete pillage could not be conceived than took place. Every house was broken open, every drawer and box ransacked, the streets strewn with fragments of furniture, pictures, tables, chairs, grain of all sorts -- the whole set off by the dead or the living bodies of those who had been unable to leave the city from the wounds received from our merciless guns. ... The plunder ceased only when there was nothing left to take or destroy."

The Treaty of Nanjing

This agreement, the Treaty of Nanjing, was the first of the "unequal treaties," that opened China to the West and marked the beginning of western exploitation of the nation

In effect, this treaty forced the Chinese government to surrender its control in its own country.

Among other things, the Treaty of Nanjing stated:

China would honor the extraterritorial rights of all British citizens; this meant that all British would be subjected to British, not Chinese, law if they committed any crime on Chinese soil.

There would be no further restrictions placed on British trade...

as a consequence, opium trade more than doubled in the three decades following the Treaty.

England didn’t return Hong Kong to China until 1997!

Between 1898 and 1901, members of the Righteous Harmony Society in China made an effort to rid the country of foreign influence.

The Boxers were fighting against:

  • foreign influence in China
  • Christian missionaries
  • European economic spheres of influence
  • extraterritorial rights and privileges of foreigners

The Boxers were eventually defeated by a joint force of international troops from Europe, Japan, and the United States.

China

The Qing Empire ruled China from 1644 to 1912.

1793

Boxer Rebellion

1898 - 1901

Taiping Rebellion

http://www.history.com/shows/mankind-the-story-of-all-of-us/videos/opium-in-china

1851 – 1864

It was because of the natural disasters, economic and political conflicts.

They claimed for:

Overthrow the Q’ing dynasty

Take out the foreigners, equality and rights.

THE WORLD’S FIRST DRUG WAR

China Confronts Britain

THE WORLD’S FIRST DRUG WAR

The cost to Chinese society was enormous. The drug weakened a large percentage of the population (some estimate that 10-20 percent of the population regularly used opium by the late nineteenth century), and cash began to flow out of the country to pay for the opium

The Chinese were fully aware of the harms of addiction, so in 1838 the Chinese emperor decided to send one of his most able officials, Lin Tse-Hsu, to the Chinese city of Canton to do whatever was necessary to end the traffic forever.

Let the War Begin…

Opium sales had risen gradually from 2,330 chests in 1788 to 4,968 chests in 1810. (A standard ‘chest’ was equal to roughly 250 pounds of opium.) This increased to 17,257 chests by 1835.

Britain continued to make organized, government-backed plans for increased opium sales in China. Britain's governor-general of India wrote in 1830, "We are taking measures for extending the cultivation of the poppy, with a view to a large increase in the supply of opium.“

While increasing supply, the British also did all they could to increase the trade. They bribed officials, helped local Chinese work out elaborate smuggling schemes to get the opium into China's interior, and distributed free samples of the drug in order to increase demand.

Lin Tse-Hsu had three proposals to “solve” China’s drug problem. He was able to put his first two proposals into effect easily.

Addicts were rounded up and forced into a rehab program

Chinese drug dealers were harshly punished, often with execution.

Lin’s third objective was to confiscate foreign shops and force foreign merchants to sign pledges of good conduct, agreeing never to trade in opium and to be punished by Chinese law if ever found in violation.

It was this last objective that eventually brought war.

Note some of the people are in

western clothes

The Opium War of 1839-42 started when the Chinese government confronted foreign merchant ships and demanded they surrender their illegal cargo.

Battles at Sea

A 19th century lithograph of a

Cantonese Opium Den

The World’s First Drug War

CONSEQUENCES

British warships were sent to Hong Kong, a trading center on the Chinese coast, where they protected opium-carrying merchant vessels.

Chinese ships sent by the emperor didn't stand a chance against the British warships and were destroyed by the dozen.

The British carried on this trade in spite of the fact that Opium use & sales had been declared illegal in China

The British government allowed this trade in spite of the fact that sale & use of Opium was illegal in England

As a result, by the 1830's, the British East India Company had become the World’s first international drug-trafficking organization

The East India Company shipped thousands of tons of opium through the Chinese port of Canton, which it traded for Chinese manufactured goods and for tea.

This trade produced, quite literally, a country filled with drug addicts, as opium parlors proliferated China in the early part of the 1800’s.

  • Social & political inestability. The society did not want the Q’ing dynasty.
  • Taiping Rebellion
  • Boxers Rebellion
  • Sun Yat Sen consolidates China.

So…the British had a dilemma: How do we increase our exports to China?

British warships destroy the small Chinese ships.

England could not balance its trade through exporting manufactured goods, mainly because the people and government of China did not have any interest in buying them.

As far as the British were concerned, the best solution was to increase the amount of goods they exported to China from their lands in India to pay for Chinese luxuries such as tea and silk.

Increasingly, in the 1700’s & 1800’s, the item exported to China was opium, produced in England’s Indian colonies

So…why were the British importing so much from China?

“Nothing Left to Take or Destroy”

During 1840 and 1841, British naval forces destroyed Chinese military resistance and visited destruction on the cities of China’s Pacific coast & inland rivers.

Using steam-powered gunboats, the British Royal Navy could navigate upstream into each of China’s major rivers.

China’s obsolete artillery could not seriously threaten the British gunboats

This gave the British the ability to completely control China’s transportation of food & goods

Reason #2

Northern Chinese merchants began to sell Chinese cotton to compete with Indian cotton the British were selling.

Previously, Britain had used their

cotton sales to help ‘balance’ its tea

imports & consumption habits.

So…why were the British importing so much from China?

“Nothing Left to Take or Destroy”

The India Gazette, a British publication, wrote about the sack of Chusan in 1840:

Reason #1

During the 1700’s, the British became a nation of tea drinkers and the demand for Chinese tea rose astronomically.

By about 1840, it is estimated that the average London worker spent five percent of his or her total household budget on tea.

Economic Background

The end result of the war was a humiliating defeat for China. In 1842, they signed a peace treaty that would have consequences that lasted to 1990’s!

By 1800, England felt it desperately

needed to boost exports to China. Why?

Every nation tries to export (sell) MORE than it imports (buys). This is referred to as the nation’s “Trade Balance”

If a nation imports (buys) more than it exports (sells), it means that the nation is losing money. This weakens the economy because the nation then has less money to spend on other things.

By 1800 (or so) England was having some difficulty maintaining its trade balance with China because it was buying much more from the Chinese than it was able to sell to them.

European Imperialism in China

The Big Picture, part 2

The Chinese Emperor and leaders of the British forces meet to discuss the points of the treaty of Nanjing.

Western dominance of China began

with the Opium War of 1839-1842

This war proved once and for all that

industrial powers could completely

dominate any non-industrial nation—

even great nations such as China

The Opium War, between the English

& the Chinese, is often seen as the

ultimate example of Imperialism

Copy of the Treaty of Nanjing

The Big Picture

1830

2012

By 1900, China was completely

dominated by the industrial

powers of Europe, the

USA & Japan.

How did this come to pass?

As in Africa and India, the industrial nations had superior technology and more advanced economies. This will help them take control of the less-industrialized China.

The Opium Wars

silk

tea

cotton

indigo dye

opium

British East India Co. gaining the right to rule India, 1757

Sepoy soldier

Arabian

Sea

Bay of

Bengal

Traditional Indian social hierarchy.

This system was called...

1857 to 1947 is known as the "British Raj" in India.

cinnamon

coffee

tea

coconut

gemstones

rubber

British Empire - in total

Indian

Ocean

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